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The Marauders pulled out a 45-42 home win over the Timberwolves after suffering a 24-point defeat in the two schools' first meeting

Maclay junior Dozie Okoroki had never been hailed a hero by his student body before, but he was Thursday night.

Okoroji’s smooth shooting stroke drained three key 3-pointers and several other jumpers, leading to an 18-point night that helped the Marauders beat Chiles 45-42.

The second-highest scoring total of Okoroji’s emerging career earned him momentary rock-star status at game’s end while being hoisted up in the air by Maclay’s excited fans.

“That was exciting,” Okoroji said. “I knew the rest were going in when I hit the first one. My confidence has grown from last year to this year.”

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Maclay junior Dozie Okoroji gets hoisted up on student's shoulders after scoring 18 points to lead Maclay's boys basketball team to a 45-42 win over Chiles on Jan. 23, 2020.(Photo: Brian Miller/Democrat)

Okoroji, who averages just under 10 points per game, was the only player in double figures for Maclay (12-5), but the Marauders did get seven apiece from junior guards O’rell Brooks and Markey Rivers and freshman forward Blaise Wallace.

The win avenged a 24-point loss to Chiles in the season’s second game.

“We’re a better team now. We have much more chemistry,” said senior guard Robert Parker-Crawford, who scored his only points of the game on clutch free throws while holding a three-point lead in the final seconds.

“Even tonight, there’s things we can improve on. You can see we’re better, even though we turned the ball over and made some key mistakes. It was definitely nice to hand it back to them.”

Parker-Crawford, who was honored before the game for scoring his 1,000th career point and who is averaging 7.7 points and 6.2 rebounds per game this season, has been the mainstay starter for the past four years even as the roster changed significantly around him.

And key contributions are popping up on both ends of the court, whether that’s Rivers hitting big shots such as his first-quarter 3-pointer or junior forward Jackson Brown banging down low with players bigger than him, as happened all night against Chiles.

“Now, we know our roles,” Parker-Crawford said. “I’ve taken a lesser role in scoring. I had to defend the biggest guy on the court a couple times, get rebounds, get steals, let Dozie do this thing. This was O’rell’s one bad game, but other than that he’s scoring 17 to 20 points a game.

“JB has found his role getting rebounds and playing D. Blaise is doing a little of everything. We’re starting to become a complete team.”

This game played out similarly to the first match-up except for the fourth quarter, which Chiles won 20-0 in the first game to create the huge disparity.

In that game, 6-foot-5 junior forward Marvis Thornton, son of former TCC great Bootsy Thornton, scored 20 points and the Timberwolves (11-8) were able to eat Maclay alive in the paint with their size.

But the Marauders did not let that happen Thursday, battling the bigs as much as they could. Thornton had just four points, while 6-6 senior center Burl Gaskins had seven, and 6-6 senior forward Sam Hartmann had five points.

Sophomore Tajden Davis led Chiles with 14 points, and senior guard Lacorey Levens had eight, but Maclay’s 17-point fourth quarter turned a two-point deficit at the end of three quarters into victory.

“We had a nine-point lead early, made some substitutions to get guys rest, and then went empty and didn’t score. That changed the game,” Timberwolves head coach Rick Davis said. “When we get subs coming off the bench, we’ve got to get some production.

“I’ve got three guys bigger than them, but we didn’t do a good job inside tonight. They altered our shots, they blocked our shots, they made us think twice about going up. We’re too big of a team for that to happen, but hats off to Maclay because they came to play and they wanted it more than we did.”